[nesfa-reading-group] Potential reading choices for February 2025

[Melody Friedenthal]

Hi all,

Although I have rarely been involved with your group, I am on the emailing
list and noticed you've been talking about Lem's Futurological Congress.
So, just a note to say a really weird movie was made which was  simply
called *The Congress*. Starring actress Robin Wright, who plays an
actress named Robin Wright. Part live action and part animated.

Regards,
Melody Friedenthal

On Thu, Oct 3, 2024 at 12:30 PM Gay Ellen Dennett <gayellendennett at gmail.com>
wrote:

> The last two are widely available in different formats in the Minuteman
> Network (and can be gotten via ILL), the Lem book will be harder to find,
> as I'm only seeing 3 copies total in Minuteman, which probably means that
> the other Networks may have the same issue.
>
> --Gay Ellen (lurking while on the Reference Desk, and counting this as a
> question😉)
>
> On Thu, Oct 3, 2024 at 11:56 AM Gloria Lucia Albasi <trebbiana61 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Here are my three suggestions for our group to vote on. Dave Grubbs has
>> assured me that these haven’t been read as group choices. Yet.
>>
>> Thank you,
>> Gloria
>> 
>>
>> (1) *The Futurological Congress *by Stanislaw Lem
>>
>> “The Futurological Congress is a 1971 black humour science fiction novel
>> by Polish author Stanisław Lem. It details the exploits of the hero of a
>> number of his stories, Ijon Tichy, as he visits the Eighth World
>> Futurological Congress at a Hilton Hotel in Costa Rica. The book is Lem's
>> take on the science fictional trope of an apparently Utopian future that
>> turns out to be an illusion.
>>
>> The book opens at the eponymous congress. A riot breaks out, and the
>> hero, Ijon Tichy, is hit by various psychoactive drugs that were put into
>> the drinking water supply lines by the government to pacify the riots. Ijon
>> and a few others escape to the safety of a sewer beneath the Hilton where
>> the congress was being held, and in the sewer he goes through a series of
>> hallucinations and false awakenings, which cause him to be confused about
>> whether or not what's happening around him is real. Finally, he believes
>> that he falls asleep and wakes up many years later. The main part of the
>> book follows Ijon's adventures in the future world — a world where everyone
>> takes hallucinogenic drugs, and hallucinations have replaced reality.”
>>
>> — Wikipedia
>>
>>
>> (2) *Infomocracy* by Malka Older
>>
>> “It's been twenty years and two election cycles since Information, a
>> powerful search engine monopoly, pioneered the switch from warring
>> nation-states to global micro-democracy. The corporate coalition party
>> Heritage has won the last two elections. With another election on the
>> horizon, the Supermajority is in tight contention, and everything's on the
>> line.  With power comes corruption. For Ken, this is his chance to do right
>> by the idealistic Policy1st party and get a steady job in the big leagues.
>> For Domaine, the election represents another staging ground in his ongoing
>> struggle against the pax democratica. For Mishima, a dangerous Information
>> operative, the whole situation is a puzzle: how do you keep the wheels
>> running on the biggest political experiment of all time, when so many have
>> so much to gain?”
>>
>> — Google Books
>>
>>
>> (3) *Pattern Recognition* by William Gibson
>>
>> “Pattern Recognition is a novel by science fiction writer William Gibson
>> published in 2003. Set in August and September 2002, the story follows
>> Cayce Pollard, a 32-year-old marketing consultant who has a psychological
>> sensitivity to corporate symbols. The action takes place in London, Tokyo,
>> and Moscow as Cayce judges the effectiveness of a proposed corporate symbol
>> and is hired to seek the creators of film clips anonymously posted to the
>> internet.
>>
>> The novel's central theme involves the examination of the human desire to
>> detect patterns or meaning and the risks of finding patterns in meaningless
>> data. Other themes include methods of interpretation of history, cultural
>> familiarity with brand names, and tensions between art and
>> commercialization. The September 11, 2001 attacks are used as a motif
>> representing the transition to the new century. Critics identify influences
>> in Pattern Recognition from Thomas Pynchon's postmodern detective story The
>> Crying of Lot 49.”
>>
>> — Wikipedia
>>
>>
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